


Silent Ghost

by NetRaptor



Series: Destiny and Destiny 2 stories [10]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Court-Martial, Deserting the Vanguard, Fallen, Gen, Hunters, Mysterious backstory, Servitors - Freeform, Silent Protagonist, untrained guardian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-06 09:28:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15883278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NetRaptor/pseuds/NetRaptor
Summary: When Guardian Nell is resurrected, her ghost can't talk and refuses to be touched. Adrift with no memories and no idea how this new world works, Nell finds her way to the Last City and the Vanguard, where having a mute ghost is an extreme liability. Facing punishment for ghost neglect, she flees into the wild  ... and there learns her ghost's dark secret.





	1. Chapter 1

When Nell opened her eyes, she was lying on the seashore with the cold waves lapping her legs. The evening sky spread blue above her.

She sat up, shivering. Nearby floated a little star-shaped robot with a light in the center that reminded her of an eye. She froze, watching it warily, waiting for it to shoot lasers or something. But all it did was watch her.

"Hello?" she said.

The robot didn't move. Maybe it was some kind of hovering camera. Its edges were scuffed and rusted, and one of its segments was slightly bent. This robot had been through the wringer.

Nell climbed to her feet, shivering, water streaming from her thin jumpsuit. What had happened to her clothes? Surely she'd been wearing something else. A dress. Hadn't it been a dress? Then she'd fallen off the boat, and the sea had been so cold ...

"Did I drown?" she asked the robot.

It didn't answer.

She turned in a circle, scanning the beach. As far as she could see, it was deserted. Boulders littered the sand, and pines crowned a bluff behind them, somber and dark. "Is anybody there?" she called. "I found your robot."

No answer.

Nell crossed the sand, picked her way through the boulders, and climbed a low spot in the bluff. Despite having drowned, her body felt strong and nimble. Even in her wet clothes, warmth burned inside her - not quite a fever.

The robot followed her.

The rapidly approaching night made it hard to see under the trees. Something scurried away as Nell stepped into the wood. "Hello?" she called again. "Anybody?" She looked at the robot. "You had to come from somewhere. And why are you following me? Shouldn't you be trying to take me back to your owner?"

In response, the robot's eye brightened like a flashlight. It shone a beam of light ahead of her, under the trees.

"That's more like it," said Nell. "I'm getting hungry and it's cold out here."

The robot guided her through the woods with its light. Nell hurried along, her damp clothes clinging to her and her wet shoes squishing with each step. She felt wide awake and alert. It may be growing dark, but she had been asleep a long time. Sleep wasn't necessary right now.

But she had the oddest feeling that she hadn't been asleep. "Was I dead?" she asked the robot again. "My brain feels so strange. I can kind of remember a few things ... like, I was wearing a dress. I think my name is Nell. Nell ... Anderson? But I can't remember anything else. Did you erase my memory?"

The robot's silence seemed sinister.

Nell tried to put these pieces together. "So, I have amnesia. I was injured or drowned or something, but now I'm alive somewhere in weird clothes. Am I some kind of escaped experiment?"

The robot mimicked the human motion of shaking its head, making the headlight sway from side to side.

"You understand me!" Nell said in surprise. "Or whoever is controlling you does. So. I'm not an escaped experiment?"

Another head shake. No.

"Was I dead?"

A nod this time. Yes.

"I was dead!" Nell exclaimed. "But how am I alive, now?"

The robot moved on, and she followed the light. "You're not going to answer me, are you? Or the people running you. I'll bet there's somebody in the back of a van with a headset and a remote, listening to every word I say."

The robot didn't reply.

Nell kept following it, despite her growing misgivings. Where was this thing leading her? Was she being kidnapped? Sure, it could claim she had been dead, but what kind of crazy story was that? The escaped experiment theory seemed the most likely. Well, as soon as they found a town, she was ditching this robot. Surely somebody could help her. Maybe the cops. Unless she was dangerous.

It might be cool to be dangerous. A dangerous escaped experiment. Maybe with superpowers.

After a few hours of walking in silence with only the chirping of crickets to keep her company, the robot guided Nell onto a road. It was an old, cracked road, with grass and small trees growing through the asphalt. But it cut through the woods in a straight line, promising easier travel than the woods.

The robot turned left and indicated the direction with its light.

"Nope," Nell said, and turned right.

The robot pursued, flew around her, and pointed its light the other way.

"Nope," Nell said again. "I'm just assuming that you're evil and guiding me to where people will take me apart. I'm out of here. Tell your evil boss." She broke into a run.

To her surprise, running was easy. Even a jog moved as fast as a sprint. The robot flew after her, its beam inadvertently lighting her way. It made an anxious beeping sound.

"Can't hear you!" Nell called.

She followed the road for about a mile, up and down several small hills. Her body thrilled at the exercise. She may not remember much, but running like this was definitely new. She'd totally been augmented.

To her disappointment, the robot kept up, flying behind her like a balloon tied by an invisible string. It wove from side to side, once in a while making a beeping sound. It didn't want her going this way. So Nell was going this way until she dropped of exhaustion. And as good as she felt right now, that might be days.

Lights up ahead. A campfire. Excellent! She'd found people. For some reason, they were camped right in the middle of the road. In the darkness, all she could make out was a crowd of figures crouched beside a fire. The aroma of cooking food touched her nose.

The robot flew in front of her, its headlight off. Its glowing blue eye looked imploring as it emphatically shook its head at her. Or body, or whatever.

Nell swatted it aside. "Go back to your boss, creepy. I'll see if these guys can give me a ride back to town." She walked down the hill and into the camp. The robot followed at a cautious distance.

The men around the fire were busy eating something and didn't notice her. She tapped one on the shoulder. "Excuse me ..."

The man turned, and he had four glowing eyes.

Nell gasped and backed away. The other men looked up, too. All of them had four eyes, like a spider's. They opened their mouths to expose sharp teeth, like a shark's. As they rose to their feet, their arms were too long, their limbs too thin, to be anything close to human.

"Um, sorry to disturb you," Nell said, forcing a smile. "I'll just be going, okay?"

"Guardian!" one of the creatures roared. It lunged forward and caught her arm. One of its other hands produced a long hunting knife.

Nell shrieked. She raised a hand to fend off the coming blow.

The lingering warmth inside her suddenly flared into a wave of white-hot heat across her skin. It flashed down her arm and formed into a gun made of fire in her hand. She shot the monster between his two middle eyes.

The monster's entire head vanished in a spurt of flames.

Nell ripped her arm out of the dead monster's grasp and ran for her life. Behind her, the monsters roared and hissed. A look over her shoulder told her they were mounting motorcycle-things parked beside the road.

She was fast, but she couldn't outrun a motorcycle.

She dashed into the woods, swung up into a tree, and climbed as high as she could. The dumb robot had vanished, thank goodness. Probably grabbed by those monsters.

Monsters! Why were monsters camped in the middle of the road? Had she awakened in some kind of post-apocalyptic nightmare? And what had that energy gun been?

This must be a world where everyone was either augmented or mutants. Or aliens. Those things could have been aliens. The robot had certainly tried to warn her away from them and she hadn't listened.

The motorcycles screamed down the road toward her. In a moment they passed and were gone, speeding away in a cloud of chemical exhaust that hurt her throat. Not gasoline engines, then.

But one motorcycle slowed and circled back, the alien driver studying the trees. A knife glinted in his fist on the handlebars.

Nell grinned fiercely. Here was a chance to score a bike for herself. She reached for that warmth inside her and held it ready, waiting.

The motorcycle chugged by slowly, then stopped and reversed under her tree. The alien's four eyes stared up at her. Its fanged mouth opened in a grin.

Nell conjured the fire gun and shot him in the chest.

The alien shrieked and fell off the motorcycle. The hole in its chest caught fire and burned across the whole body. The stench was hideous.

Nell leaped down from the tree, grabbed the knife from the dead alien, then climbed onto the bike. It didn't have wheels - it floated somehow, instead. All the controls were on the handlebars. She fiddled with them, made the bike shoot a blue bolt of fire that ignited nearby brush, then found the accelerator. Then she turned the bike away from the camp, back the direction the robot had wanted her to go, and squeezed the accelerator.

The bike shot up the road like a rocket. Fortunately it had lights on the nose, so she could actually see the curves in the road. The remains of the painted lines on the road helped, too.

Lights up ahead - the aliens were coming back. Nell crouched low behind the handlebars, aimed for a gap, and shot between the aliens. They yelled and spun their bikes to give chase.

Nell concentrated on steering the motorcycle. Without wheels for friction, it took turns badly, floating sideways. She had to release the gas while she turned, then fire the accelerator to move in a new direction.

Still, it wasn't too hard to learn, and the road had no traffic. Nell raced the aliens on one of their own bikes, and for a while, she held her lead.

Then the road made a sharp right turn that Nell didn't notice until it was too late.

She crashed the motorcycle straight into the woods, branches lashing her face. The bike smashed into a tree and exploded into flame. The frame buckled and pitched beneath her. Nell flew into the tree trunk, headfirst. Light exploded through her head.

Deep blackness enfolded her.


	2. Am I a superhero?

"I'm sorry," a voice whispered. Or was it voice? It could have also been a computer making a garbled clicking sound.

Nell opened her eyes. Fire burned nearby, heating her skin unpleasantly. The motorcycle was a twisted pile of burning metal, and the tree that had destroyed it was now on fire. So was the surrounding brush.

"Crap!" Nell leaped to her feet, a faint pain fading from the top of her head.

The robot had returned, flying back and forth in an agitated way.

"Yeah, we started a forest fire," Nell said. She ran toward the road. To her horror, the fire had already spread deeper into the woods and crawled along the road. The air was thick with smoke. The aliens were gone, probably assuming nobody could survive a crash like that.

The robot swooped in front of her and indicated the direction to go with a flick of its light.

"I know!" Nell retorted, and broke into a sprint, up the road, away from the fire.

"So," she muttered aloud, "there's aliens who ride flying motorcycles. And I can make a gun out of my life force that burns people to death. Yeah, I'm an experiment with superpowers. And I'm being followed by a robot that keeps trying to help me. I guess. It's probably keeping me under observation for the evil scientists who did this to me. Or aliens. Maybe aliens did this to me."

The robot didn't answer. It flew above her left shoulder, keeping its light on the road ahead. As they left the fire behind, darkness blanketed the world, and she was thankful for the robot's assistance.

"Let me know if there's any more aliens," she told the robot. "Oh wait. You're probably taking me to your alien overlords."

The robot didn't answer. But when she glanced at it, only half of its eye was lit. What did that mean? A malfunction? Or some kind of emote?

Nell ran for the next two hours - or, rather, she walked up hills and ran down the other side. The road was climbing into the mountains, curving back and forth to find the easiest path.

"You'd think we'd have found a town by now," she panted to the robot. "Or seen a car. But there's nothing out here whatsoever."

They traveled the rest of the night. By the time dawn brightened the sky, Nell was tiring. Her stomach growled, and even her magnificent energy level was giving out. Maybe it had been all the uphill climbing.

"If only I hadn't wrecked that motorcycle," she lamented for the fifth time. "We could have gone so much further. And my feet wouldn't hurt this much."

They reached a spot where a stream flowed under the road in a collapsed culvert. Nell left the road, followed the stream a little way, and sat on the bank to remove her shoes. They were still damp and had chafed her feet raw on the sides. Blisters had formed on the instep of each foot.

"Stupid wet shoes," she muttered, and soaked her feet in the icy cold stream. She also bent down and scooped up water in her cupped hands for a drink. It was probably full of bacteria and amoebas, but she'd have to risk it. Maybe her augmentation made her resistant to forest critters.

As she pulled her feet out of the water, the robot flew down and looked at them.

"Gross, huh?" Nell said. "I won't be running anywhere for a while."

The robot flashed an odd particle beam across her feet. Scanning? The beam felt warm wherever it touched. To her astonishment, the raw skin and blisters slowly healed over and vanished.

The robot gave its attention to the other side of her feet, healing them from every angle. Nell rubbed her feet in disbelief. No more pain. No more raw skin.

"You can heal?" she asked. "But you're ... not a camera, then? Cameras can't heal."

The robot looked at her, its eye only half lit again.

Nell stared at it, trying to understand. "So ... if you're not a camera, and you can heal, then what are you? You look like a robot. You make robot sounds."

The rest of its eye lit, and it tilted to one side, like a puppy listening to its owner.

Nell reached out one hand to touch the robot. It flinched backward, out of her reach.

"Be like that," she told it. "I wasn't going to hurt you. I just want to see if you're metal or plastic."

The robot floated overhead, keeping an eye on her.

"Fine." She pulled on her damp shoes. "I wish I knew where we're going. I hope it's someplace with food. And beds. And humans. Are there still humans? Or is it only aliens and robots?"

The robot didn't reply.

Nell sighed and set off up the road again, the robot taking its place above her shoulder.

Later that morning, they came to a sign. It was badly rusted and had fallen off its pole. But worse, when Nell had pried it out of the weeds and struggled to make out the writing, it was written in Russian.

"Why is it Russian?" she asked the robot. "We weren't in Russia. Or ... wait. Were we? I can't remember."

The robot stared at her.

Nell rubbed her temples, struggling to fish faint memories from the depths of her mind. "I don't think I'm Russian. But how would I know?" She looked at one hand, making note of her fair skin. Her hair, when she squinted at a lock, was black.

"Great," she told the robot. "I could be from any European country, and there's a lot of them. Also, this sign. It's rusted out. That's not a good sign for civilization. Plus this." She kicked a chunk of asphalt out of the road. "Healing robot, I'm going to die alone out here, aren't I?"

The top half of the robot's eye turned off, and the four segments around it drooped - all but the bent one, which didn't move.

It looked sad, Nell realized with a shock. How could a robot feel sadness, let alone express it?

Leaving the sign, Nell walked on, trying to ignore her growing hunger. "Can you heal hunger?" she asked her companion.

The robot shook its head.

"I figured it wouldn't be that easy." Nell followed the road around a bend. "Maybe I could use my fire gun to shoot pheasants. Then I could butcher them with my knife. Not sure I could build a fire, though. Not unless the gun could light wood."

The robot said nothing.

"So, you can heal," Nell said. "And you're not a camera. Some kind of super advanced tech? Are we friends? Did we escape the lab together?"

The robot's eye took on its sad expression.

"Not quite it?" Nell said, watching it. "Not really friends? Or we didn't escape together? Did I escape, and they sent you after me?"

The robot shook its head.

"I wish you could talk," Nell said. "It's not like I have anything else to do. This road is too steep to run. So, let's see. You're not after me. We might be friends and I just can't remember. But you're scared of me, so that doesn't make sense."

The robot blinked its eye.

"Yes? No?" Nell guessed. "Getting warmer? Okay, how about this. Am I an escaped experiment?"

The robot shook its head.

"I'm not?" Nell tried to imagine a new scenario. "Well, I have powers. I can run forever and summon a fire gun. So I must be a superhero?" She gave the robot a hopeful look.

It tilted to one side, then the other, as if considering, then nodded.

"I'm a superhero?" Nell said. "Or only sort of one?"

The robot nodded again.

"Sort of a superhero," Nell said, satisfied. "I can live with that. Now, we saw those aliens. Am I full of their technology?"

The robot shook its head hard.

"No, huh? Very no." Nell scratched her head. "Is it technology from another kind of alien?"

The robot started to nod, then flew in a circle, as if bewildered. It ended up back above her shoulder, wearing its sad expression.

"What does that mean?" Nell muttered. "A very big 'sort of'? Like, my powers come from aliens?"

The robot made a strange beeping noise. It almost sounded like garbled words. Then it gave up and shook its head.

Suddenly Nell understood. "You're damaged, aren't you? It's why you can't talk."

The robot shook its head yes. Then no.

"Poor thing," Nell said. "I wish I knew how to fix you. But I don't have any tools or anything." After a moment, she added kindly, "I won't ask any more questions, if you don't want."

The robot nodded slowly, almost reluctantly.

Nell walked in silence for the next hour. She had time to notice her aching feet and legs, and her raging hunger. But after a while, the warm sun on her head began making her stomach cramp. Or was it the sun? It had probably been the water. Even now, her stomach was probably full of critters.

"I need to rest," she told the robot. She tottered to the side of the road in the shade, and retched. Not much came up.

The robot started, as if surprised. Then it traced its healing beam over her whole body, head to foot, lingering on her stomach.

The cramping slowly faded. Nell straightened, panting. The soreness disappeared from her legs and feet, too.

"Thanks," she told the robot. "That was going to be really bad."

It nodded.

Nell sat there another moment, recovering. "You know, as long as you're around to heal me, I'm invincible. I could ... I could jump off that cliff and you could probably put me back together."

The robot's eye shrank to a frightened pinprick.

"Don't worry, I won't," she assured it. "I'm ready to keep going, now. Are we still going the right way?"

The robot nodded.

Nell set out again. She climbed steep roads for the rest of the day. After a while, her hunger faded to a dull tiredness. Any time her feet began to ache, the robot healed them. "I'll be able to die of hunger without being sore," she observed. "So ... I guess that's a plus."

She glanced at the robot. It looked sad.

Any time she mentioned her dire situation, it made the robot sad. Why was that? It was scared of her, but it didn't want her to suffer. Was it her superhero sidekick? Or was it the alien that had given her powers?

She asked this. The robot only gazed at her, tilted slightly to one side.

"I think you're an alien," Nell said as the sun set behind the mountains to their right. "Or alien tech. I mean, you seem nice enough. But you might still be trying to give me to your alien overlords. So I don't know."

She turned another bend in the road and entered a town. She almost didn't see it at first - the rusted cars were hidden by shoulder-high weeds. Trees grew through the fallen roofs of houses and shops. Undergrowth choked the little streets.

Nell stared at the town in speechless dismay. Slowly she picked her way down a ruined street in the faint hope of finding signs of life. The robot flew along with her, looking at the remains with the same shocked wonder.

Abruptly a shiver crept over Nell, and she stopped. "This place is a graveyard. We shouldn't be here." She retraced her steps and hurried up the road, leaving behind the windowless buildings, the fading monument to human life.

Nell didn't stop for a long time. Ideas she didn't want to think about spun through her brain. She climbed and climbed until the light began to fail and stars twinkled in the sky above. Then she crept into the shelter of the trees and curled up in the leaves.

"Robot," she whispered to the glowing blue eye nearby. "Everyone is dead, aren't they?"

A nod.

The rusted cars with no wheels, the abandoned buildings, all spun through her mind's eye. "Was it bombs?"

The robot shook its head.

"War?"

A nod.

No wonder the road was crumbling to nothing. War had driven everyone out. Probably war with those motorcycle aliens.

Nell rested her head on her arms, shivering. "Robot, keep watch, okay?"

It nodded.

Her clothes were dry, but the mountain air chilled her anyway. She piled leaves over herself for insulation, telling herself she didn't care what insects lived in them. After a very long while, she managed to fall asleep.


	3. Civilization

A voice was speaking somewhere. "And you see, I can't allow that, and I'm sorry. I wish I wasn't like this. It's not fair to either of us."

As Nell awoke, the voice became a whirring, clicking sound with no words. She lifted her head. The robot floated a foot from her face, keeping watch. It saw her move, turned, and the bottom of its eye turned off. The top part formed a cartoony smiling eye.

"Good morning to you, too," Nell said, crawling to her feet and shedding leaves everywhere. "Were you ... talking just now?"

The robot tilted sideways and gave her a questioning look.

"Nevermind," Nell said, waving a hand. "Is there water around here? I'm parched."

The robot nodded and flew out of the trees, up the road. Nell followed. The warm, powerful feeling had returned, but beneath it she was weak with hunger. At least she could summon the fire gun if they happened across anything edible.

The robot led her to a freezing cold stream, barely a foot wide, cascading across the road and down the mountain. Nell drank from it and splashed her face, gasping. She combed her fingers through her hair in a hopeless attempt at straightening it, and discovered just how many leaves were still caught in it.

"Robot," she said, "are there any edible berries or plants around here? I don't know how far I'll make it today."

The robot turned and looked up the road, making a beeping sound. Then it looked at her and nodded vigorously.

"A little further?" Nell said. "Okay. A little further. I can do this."

She plodded up the road, watching her feet. A little further. That was all. Maybe the alien overlords would have food. Unless they were all robots. But she could still beg. Even experiments got fed sometimes.

Too bad she hadn't been able to steal food from the motorcycle aliens. They'd had something that smelled good. As she thought about their four eyes, their long, insectoid limbs, another thought occurred to her. The first alien had yelled, "Guardian!"

"Robot," she said, "were those aliens called guardians?"

The robot shook its head emphatically.

That left only one option. "Am I called a Guardian?"

An excited nod and a smile expression.

"So I'm something called a Guardian," Nell said. "A sort-of superhero. What am I supposed to be guarding, if there's no people left?"

The robot didn't answer.

Nell walked on, putting one foot in front of the other. She would have walked right by their destination if the robot hadn't chirped and flown toward the side of the road. Nell looked up, snapping out of a waking doze.

A man sat on a ledge overlooking the road. He wore brown and green clothing, with a camouflage cloak draped over him. A robot like her own floated beside him. He watched Nell and her robot with bemusement.

"Um, hi," Nell called.

The man raised a hand in a wave.

"Are you friendly?" she called.

He nodded and beckoned to her. As she approached the foot of the little ledge, he said quietly, "A new Guardian, even at this late hour? How long have you been out here?"

"About two days," Nell said. "Do you have any food? I'm starving."

He gestured to show her the way up on the ledge. As she climbed up, he said, "I'm Madrid. Vanguard Hunter."

"I'm Nell," she replied, shaking his gloved hand. "I don't know what the Vanguard is. You're human, right? Let me see your eyes."

He pulled back his hood. While his eyes, nose, and mouth looked human, his skin was blue and his eyes glowed yellow.

Nell summoned her fiery gun and aimed it at his face.

Instantly he summoned a similar gun and aimed it at hers.

Nell stood very still, heart pounding, gazing into the burning red core of his gun. "You're another alien," she breathed. "The last ones tried to kill me."

"Put it down," Madrid said. "If we kill each other, our ghosts will resurrect us, but it'll hurt. And I'll be pissed."

Slowly Nell lowered the gun, letting the red-hot power fizzle out of her hand. Madrid lowered his at the same time. Then he lifted a rifle from a sling across his back and set it across his knees. Not quite a threat.

"Now," he said. "What has your ghost told you?"

"Ghost?"

He nodded at the robot beside her. "Him. He's called a ghost. This is mine, and her name is Rose."

The ghost floating beside Madrid bobbed in midair. It had the same eye as Nell's robot, but instead of star-shaped segments, it was encased in twisted gold wire in intricate designs. "Nice to meet you," she said in a female voice. "Please don't hurt my Guardian."

Nell looked at her own rusted, bent ghost, nonplussed. "They can talk? This one only makes beeping sounds."

Madrid stared at her, his yellow eyes widening. "He hasn't told you anything?"

"I know I'm a Guardian," Nell said defensively. "I can make the fire gun."

Madrid motioned to his ghost. Rose flew toward the silent ghost, which backed away. Rose scanned the silent ghost, then turned to Madrid. "I don't know how he's alive. He's very old and mangled."

Nell looked at the robot with sudden guilt. The rust in the corners of his segments ... the bent part ... Suddenly protective, she motioned for him to return to his place over her shoulder. He did.

"Sit down, kid," Madrid said. He opened a knapsack sitting nearby and pulled out a sealed package of rations. "Eat that and I'll try to explain."

Nell sat and tore into the rations. It was dried meat, crackers, nuts, and fruit, but at that point, it was the best food she'd ever tasted.

Madrid told her about the alien super-intelligence called the Traveler, how it had brought about humanity's Golden Age, which eventually collapsed when the Traveler's enemies arrived. The Traveler, badly damaged, could no longer defend itself, and sent out ghosts to create Guardians. Now Guardians protected the Last City as well as the Traveler which floated above it.

"That doesn't explain why you're blue," Nell said.

Madrid smiled. "I'm of the Awoken race. We're humans with ... benefits."

"Not experiments?" Nell said.

"No, no," Madrid chuckled. "You might say the Exos are the experiments, but they'd be very offended. Robots with human intelligence inside. Not like ghosts."

Nell finally had information about this strange new world. She found out that the aliens she had met were called Fallen, and roamed the wilds outside the City, scavenging metal and supplies from ruined human cities.

But the strangest thing was hearing Madrid's ghost talk. He treated her like a person, asking her questions or deferring to her in conversation.

Nell's ghost never made a sound. It nodded or expressed emotion now and then, but nothing more. Madrid began to give it anxious looks.

"Tell you what," he said at last. "I'll take you back to the Last City, myself. You need training and gear. And clothes. You can't run around the EDZ dressed like that."

Nell looked down at her thin jumpsuit. "Yeah, it's not very warm. I've been so cold at night."

"And have your ghost checked," Madrid added. "He must be broken if he can't communicate with you. Ghosts are semi-telepathic, so you should be able to hear him in your head, at least."

"You know," Nell said, "sometimes I think I can. When I'm just waking up, someone will be talking to me. Then I wake up and it's only beeps and whistles."

Madrid frowned. "Definitely get him repaired."

* * *

Madrid produced a floating motorcycle out of thin air. Nell was delighted to learn that Guardian vehicles were called sparrows, while the Fallen rode pikes. When she talked about stealing a pike and crashing it, Madrid was impressed.

"On your first day as a Guardian? You're tough stuff, kid. You'll do fine as a Hunter."

"Why a Hunter?" Nell asked. "You said there's other disciplines."

"Only Hunters can summon the Golden Gun. That's what you already are."

Nell thought about this as she rode behind Madrid on his sparrow, the trees and road flitting by. The gun felt so natural whenever it appeared in her hand. Maybe Madrid was right.

After a while, they arrived at a space ship parked in a clearing in the trees. Climbing inside made Nell a little nervous - aliens and experiments and so forth. But Madrid flew it like an airplane instead of blasting into space. After only an hour, they came into sight of a huge moon-thing floating above a city. An honest to goodness city, with lights and buildings and people.

"That's the Traveler," Madrid said, nodding at the moon-thing. "Source of the Light that gives us Guardians our powers. You'll learn more about it in the Vanguard."

"So my powers do come from aliens," Nell muttered to her ghost.

It smiled.

* * *

Nell arrived in the Tower and was immediately whisked into a chain of activities. She had to meet a lot of strange people - humans, Awoken, and cyborgs called Exos. The one who would be her boss, Cayde-6, immediately put her at ease by saying he wished he could have seen her steal that pike.

She filled out registration papers, was assigned basic clothing and a standard pistol, and was given a tiny dorm room all to herself. Her training would begin the next day.

And whenever she mentioned that her ghost couldn't talk, people looked anxious and whispered to each other. It seemed that all messages were relayed by ghosts communicating with their Guardians.

Nell took her ghost to a repair station. Here a corner of the long balcony-tower was roped off and filled with tools and parts for fixing ghosts. But her ghost still refused to be touched. When the repairman tried, the robot disappeared.

"Something's definitely wrong with him, ma'am," said the repairman. "Ghosts generally like it when their Guardian handles them. Like so." He summoned his own ghost, which rested quietly in his hands, gazing at Nell curiously.

"He's never let me touch him," Nell said, marveling at how tame the other ghost acted. "Maybe he's too wild, still."

The repairman blinked at her. "Ghosts don't go wild, ma'am."

All this made Nell unsettled and upset without quite knowing why. She went back to her room and took a long, hot shower, then put on her new clothes. While Warlocks got robes and Titans clanked around in heavy armor, Hunter gear seemed to be a sweater and thick jeans.

"I can live with this," Nell said, looking at her reflection in the mirror as she brushed her hair. Her ghost peered at her over her shoulder. He seemed to approve.

"Hey," she said, turning to look at him. "Look, I'm sorry for calling you evil and thinking you were a camera. I didn't know what ghosts were like. It's fine with me if you can't talk. We all have problems, you know?"

The ghost nodded.

"So," Nell said, drawing a deep breath, "everybody else's ghosts have names. Is it all right if I name you?"

The ghost nodded cautiously.

"Can I call you Hadrian?"

The ghost floated there a moment, obviously thinking about it. Then it smiled and nodded.

"Hadrian it is," Nell said. "Whew. Glad we got that settled."

That night, as she climbed into her new bed with its fresh sheets, she said, "Hadrian, I think you talk to me when I'm asleep. I keep hearing a voice. So ... if you want to tell me things as I'm dozing off, I might remember them tomorrow."

The ghost merely looked at her.

Nell lay on the strange pillow and stared into the darkness. It was so much more comfortable than a pile of leaves, but it was unfamiliar. Why couldn't Hadrian talk? She mused on it for a while. He acted like a wild animal, flinching away from being touched, only making beeping sounds. If he was a human and acted like that, he'd be recovering from trauma.

"Are you traumatized?" she asked sleepily. Hadrian's eye blinked on in the darkness, then off again.

"Maybe," Nell answered herself. "Hard to say."

As she sank into sleep, a voice whispered in her mind, "You have no idea, Guardian. You have no idea."


	4. Neglect

Hunter training took place in the woods a few miles from the Last City. First, they had to run two miles with a backpack full of rocks, which simulated the weight of combat gear. When they finished and were groaning and gulping water, the trainer pointed at a hill rising above them - almost a mountain.

"There's a beacon at the top," the trainer said. "First one to tap the beacon with their ghost's ID tag is the winner. Go!"

There were four other new Hunters, besides Nell. All of them were a different skin color, all of them had the same bewildered look, and all of them had ghosts who could talk.

Still panting from the two-mile run, Nell took off up the mountainside. As she scrambled and labored to climb the steep slope, two of her opponents leaped lightly over her, jumping like grasshoppers up the mountain.

"How do you do that?" she panted to Hadrian. She tried to jump, but her muscles could only carry her so far. Besides, they were doing it differently, somehow. She paused to catch her breath and think. Could it be that warm Light feeling she used to make her fire gun? Maybe that let Guardians jump.

Pulling on that warmth, she jumped again. This time she sailed straight up in the air for ten feet. She jumped a second time in midair, propelling herself off the Light itself. For a second, her head cleared the trees.

"This is more like it," she told Hadrian. "Let's smoke these losers."

Nell began leaping from tree to tree, barely giving each branch time to bend under her weight. It was so much easier to leap up a mountainside than to walk. She'd spent two days climbing winding mountain roads when she could have flown.

She passed one hunter, then another. They weren't using the trees as stepping stones like Nell was. Her heart soaring with her feet, she arrived on the mountaintop.

A peg stuck out of the ground with a glowing green light on top. Nell ran to it and beckoned to her ghost. He scanned it with his beam. Nothing happened. He gave her an anxious look.

"You can't talk to it, can you?" Nell panted.

As she stood there, wondering what to do, another hunter arrived - a young woman with a medium brown complexion. Panting, she nodded to Nell and let her ghost scan the beacon.

"Signal transmitted," said her ghost. "Wait. It says we're the first ones."

The Hunter girl and her ghost stared at Nell and Hadrian.

"We couldn't get it to work," Nell said lamely.

She waited in growing frustration as the other four hunters arrived and scanned the beacon. They stood around and waited for Nell to take her turn. When her ghost again tried to communicate and failed, one of them submitted her tag for her.

Last place.

Humiliated, she followed the others along a winding path down the hillside. Hadrian simply disappeared rather than face condemning looks from the other ghosts.

The girl who had arrived second slowed down and matched strides with Nell. "I'm Juno. What's wrong with your ghost?"

"He can't talk," Nell said in a low voice. "They say he's damaged, but he won't let anyone close enough to fix him."

Juno winced. "Sorry about that. I'll explain to the trainer. Surely he can correct the scores."

"Maybe." Nell was starting to realize what a crippling handicap it was to have a mute ghost. "Thanks for not rubbing my nose in it. I just don't know what to do."

When they reached the bottom of the hill, their trainer was waiting for them, a burly human wrapped in a Hunter's cloak. "You all performed at baseline standards," he observed. "But you! Guardian Nell! What happened? You had the lead!"

"I tripped, sir," Nell said, meeting his eye steadily. "Guardian Juno won fair and square."

The other students gave her surprised looks.

"Being clumsy is no excuse!" the trainer bellowed. "If you'd had Cabal on your tail, you'd be dead! Guardians don't trip, understand?"

"Yes sir," Nell said, unmoved. No way was she letting her poor ghost take the heat for this.

"All right, Hunters!" the trainer said, turning to the rest of them. "Quick step back to the city walls! Live fire training in ten! Move!"

Nell and the others broke into a jog back toward town. Their trainer jumped on a sparrow and zipped ahead.

"You're very brave," said one of the young men Nell hadn't met yet. "But if your ghost doesn't work, your scores will stay low."

"So what?" Nell said fiercely. "It's not his fault. I'll work extra hard on things that don't involve ghosts. I'll pass, you'll see."

* * *

 

That night, Nell was so tired, she fell asleep with her head on the table in the cafeteria. Her fellow hunters woke her up and helped her to her room.

Nell pulled off her boots, stretched out on the bed, and went back to sleep in her clothes.

Hadrian materialized in the quiet room. He gazed at his sleeping Guardian for a long time. Then he swept her with a healing beam, erasing the bruises and tired muscles that she had earned over the course of the day.

"You protected me," he whispered. His voice was set to the wrong frequency for human brains, and he didn't know how to change it. "You took poor scores and extra work because of me. My dear, brave Guardian." He healed her again, even though she didn't need it. "I wish I could talk to you, Nell. I wish I could tell you how my spark burns with yours. I wish I could tell you what happened to me. But ... but if anyone knew ..." He pulled his segments together tightly, glancing at the walls as if afraid of being overheard. "I'm scared of what they'd do. And I can't lose you. Not now that I've found you."

He dared float down beside her, and gently touched her face with his shell. Then he zipped backward, amazed at his own daring. He phased to rest, and kept watch over his Guardian from there. "You mean the world to me, Nell," he whispered to her mind. "If nothing else, I hope that gets through. And I'm so sorry about ruining your scores."

Nell sighed and slept on. Hadrian stood guard the rest of the night.

* * *

 

Hunter training continued, day after day. Nell excelled at anything that didn't involve ghost interactions. She learned to handle and care for weapons, aced all kinds of wilderness survival, and trained to drive a sparrow. But when it came to speed-hacking enemy consoles, she failed entirely.

"What is wrong with you?" her trainer snarled, drawing her aside from the other students. "You had above average scores across the board - and now, zeros! Won't your ghost do what you ask? What is wrong with you two?"

"Nothing's wrong," Nell said through her teeth. "Sir."

"Is your ghost broken? This is a simple hack! Summon your ghost."

The last thing Nell wanted to do was summon Hadrian and subject him to the trainer's scrutiny. But it was a direct order, and she faced punishment if she disobeyed. So she held out a hand and said, "Hadrian, come on."

Her ghost appeared, his eye a tiny dot of terror.

The trainer stared at the ghost for a long second in dismayed silence. Then he yelled in Nell's face, "This ghost is damaged! Don't you care for your own ghost? His shell is rusted, for the Traveler's sake! How long do you think you'd last in the field if you let your ghost die?"

"He won't let me touch him, sir," Nell said. She made a slight gesture with her wrist, telling Hadrian to disappear. He did.

"That's between the two of you, isn't it?" snarled the trainer. "You get that ghost a new shell by Monday, or I'm reporting you to the Vanguard Commander for ghost neglect."

He stamped away, leaving Nell trembling with rage and apprehension. She followed the other students to their next lesson, head down, fists clenched. She worried about it the rest of the day - how to give a new shell to a ghost reluctant to be touched?

As soon as they were dismissed from class, she made a beeline for her room. Once inside, she summoned her ghost. "Hadrian," she whispered as the robot appeared. "You heard my trainer, right? You need a new shell."

The robot nodded, wearing his sad expression.

She leaned toward him a little. "You'll have to let me touch you. Just to change your shell. Please?"

Hadrian backed away, shaking his head no.

"They're going to report me for neglecting you!" Nell exclaimed. "Do you want your Guardian to get court-martialed?"

Hadrian did a fair impression of hanging his head in shame.

"So, please, just let me-" Nell stretched out one hand.

Hadrian vanished.

"Hadrian!" she yelled, stamping her foot. "Light's sake, I'm trying to help you!"

The robot didn't reappear.

Muttering about bratty ghosts, Nell stashed her pistol in her desk drawer and went down to the Tower cafeteria. But inside, her stomach curled into a knot.

* * *

 

Nell worked hard the rest of the week, but as a trainee Guardian, she only had Saturday to rest.

After pleading with Hadrian all week, by Saturday she was so disgusted with him, she spent the whole day buried in a digital book on her new tablet, pointedly ignoring him. She'd just have to take the court-martial or whatever the Vanguard did to Guardians who neglected their ghosts.

Dark thoughts crept into the edges of her mind. What if Hadrian actually hated her, and that was why he refused to speak or work properly? Just because he made sad faces didn't mean he was actually sad. If he actually cared about her, he'd let her change his stupid shell.

But as Monday dawned, Nell found that she was terrified of being punished one more time. What sort of awful prisons might they have here? Would they chain her up? And what if they confiscated Hadrian? He may be an annoying little creep, but he was still her friend.

She dressed warmly, sneaked some food out of the cafeteria, and crept out of the Tower as the sun was climbing above the mountains beyond the walls. She leaped off the wall and used her Light-powered jump to soften her landing. Then she fled toward the woods in the distance, calling upon her newfound speed.

She didn't slow until she was two miles beyond the City's borders. By that time she was following a narrow valley between two mountains, picking her way around huge rock outcroppings and trees with trunks thicker than cars.

Hadrian phased into sight and made a questioning beep.

"Look," Nell said. "I could either accept whatever beating they were going to dish out, or take you and get out of dodge. So, we're running away."

Hadrian made the saddest sound she'd ever heard.

"Like you have room to talk," she snapped. "If you'd let me change your shell, we wouldn't be in this mess."

Wearing his sad expression, Hadrian took his place over her shoulder and accompanied her on her flight into the wild.

Nell's wilderness survival training came in handy. She kept to a dry, stony riverbed, where she left no trail. It was too rough to bring a sparrow through, so any pursuit would follow on foot. Of course, it was logical to another hunter that she'd follow the stream bed. So after a while, she leaped into the treetops and traveled from tree to tree.

She paused at noon to rest and eat. Perched on a thick limb halfway up a huge oak, she remarked, "If you can't talk to the Vanguard, they can't talk to you, right? Which means they can't track you."

Hadrian flew back and forth in front of her, pacing in midair. He gave a brief nod and kept pacing.

"What's wrong?" Nell asked.

The ghost looked at her and halted. He made a scratchy beeping noise that sounded painful.

"Are you okay?" Nell said, wrinkling her nose.

Hadrian's eye flicked off and he made the sound again, a little different this time - more focused.

"You're trying to talk," Nell said, comprehending. "Say it again. Slowly."

Hadrian looked at her imploringly and again made the sound. It sounded like he was dying, computer sounds turned to screeches. But this time Nell made out the word.

"Guaaarrrr diiiiii aaaaan."

"Guardian," she repeated. "Very good!"

Hadrian nodded, making his smile eye. Now he tried to say a different word, shorter this time.

Nell listened, her head turned sideways. "Sounds like ... oh ... say it again."

"Faaaaaah aaaalllll eeeeen."

"Fallen?"

Hadrian nodded until he bobbed up and down in the air.

"Fallen," Nell muttered, pulling out her pistol and scanning the ground below the tree. "Where?"

Hadrian gazed steadily northeast, further up the valley.

"Right," Nell whispered. "We won't go that way, then." She studied the mountain slope she had been climbing. The top rose into a sheer cliff devoid of vegetation, so she couldn't make it to the top. The far side of the valley had a more gradual slope and more trees, but she'd have to cross the stream bed to get there. An easy target for any Fallen snipers.

"Stay invisible," she told her ghost. "I'm going to sneak that way, east. If I get spotted, I can fight."

He nodded and disappeared.


	5. Servitor

Nell slid to the ground and crept back down toward the stream bed. She darted from tree to tree, stopping to watch for enemies. Nothing seemed out of place, and birds sang in the trees overhead. They tended to flee when aliens were close.

She reached the last tree and peered around. The stream bed was thirty feet wide, studded with large rocks and boulders that made footing treacherous. But no enemies were in sight, so she ventured across.

As she reached the far side, she glanced up the valley. In the distance, almost out of sight, a huge sphere rose into sight from behind a rock. It looked like a ghost the size of a sofa, with a glowing purple eye in the center. Nell gazed into its eye for a split second, then darted under cover of the trees.

"Hadrian," she said, sweat suddenly soaking her undershirt, "I just saw one of those Fallen robots. A Servitor, I think they're called. It looked right at me."

In the distance, a Fallen gave a snarling cry.

Her ghost popped into view in front of her, frantically motioning for her to run.

Nell jumped up and ran like a deer, sprinting for the eastern mountainside, leaping fallen limbs and weaving through the trees. Behind her, arc bolts splashed on the ground and tree trunks, smoldering and burning.

The memory played through her mind of that figure at the campfire turning its head and having four eyes. And she had blown its head off. Would these Fallen remember her as the Guardian who had crashed their pike? What if they wanted revenge?

The world around her turned slow and thick, the sunlight too bright. Nell struggled to move, to breathe, to keep running. "What's haaaap-"

The world blinked away for an instant. Then it returned, and she was back at the stream bed, stumbling to all fours in the rocks. The huge Servitor floated nearby, looking smug. It had teleported her back to itself. Nell had read that they could do that, but had no idea it was so unpleasant.

Fallen grabbed her arms and legs, tearing the pistol out of her hand. She struggled and thrashed, even summoning her golden gun. But the aliens had such a tight grip on her arm, she couldn't aim it at anything. The aliens laughed and hissed, a whole crowd of them, all gripping guns and knives. The word Guardian was mentioned over and over as they dragged her toward the Servitor.

The huge, purple eye stared down at her, intelligent and otherworldly. It made noises like Fallen speech, and they answered it.

"They're just like ghosts," Nell muttered. Then she squeezed her eyes shut. The tiny bit she knew about Servitors was that the Fallen worshiped them, they could teleport themselves and objects, they empowered their Fallen companions, and they could fire a huge arc bolt from their eye that could tear a Guardian in half.

But this one didn't seem interested in killing her. Nell opened one eye. The Servitor was studying the fiery gun in her hand.

It emitted a ghost-like scanning beam, tracing over the gun in a heavy, dragging sensation. The burning heat in her hand melted away, followed by all the extra warmth in her body. Blue motes of Light swirled down her arm to her fingers, and from there, into the Servitor. Her strength went with it, draining away with her Light.

It was such an unexpected, horrible feeling, Nell thought that it had somehow taken her blood, too. Her body went cold and limp. A shuddering cry escaped her. Darkness encroached at the corners of her vision.

The Fallen laughed and let her sag to the ground. Nell hung there, her wrists still held tightly, head drooping. Her muscles had turned to mush.

The Servitor spoke to the Fallen - or her, she didn't know which. An alien grabbed her hair and forced her head backward, holding a knife to her throat. She looked into its four eyes as it snarled a string of phrases at her. She sat perfectly still, uncomprehending.

The Servitor rumbled something. The Fallen snarled in her face, "Ghost! Ghost!"

"You ... you want my ghost?" she whispered.

The Fallen pressed the cold blade to her throat. "Ghost!"

The Servitor had eaten her Light, leaving her weak and powerless. And now it wanted her ghost so it could finish the job. "Hadrian," she whispered, "don't do it. You can resurrect me, so just let them kill me and leave."

There was a few seconds of tense silence. Then the Servitor spoke again.

To Nell's surprise, the alien withdrew the knife. With the Servitor barking orders, the aliens produced ropes and tied her arms and legs. One slung her over its shoulder and carried her back up the stream bed, escorted by the Servitor and the other Fallen.

Their camp was hidden under the edge of the trees, a series of fire pits and scrap metal parts in the process of being jury-rigged into various machines. The aliens tied Nell to a tree. The Servitor floated nearby, keeping an eye on her.

Slowly Nell began to revive, a little Light leaking back into her. She lifted her head and watched the aliens working on their contraptions. They threw her nasty glances, and sometimes they snarled the word Guardian to each other. If only she could rest, she could summon her golden gun, burn through the ropes, and escape.

Just as Nell began to wonder why they had bothered capturing her, the Servitor swept her with a heavy, invasive scan. It seemed to reach inside her, tugging at her soul, itself. Her Light siphoned away into its eye. Sick cold sank through her and her vision went black.

She came to a while later, sweat beading on her face and neck. The Servitor was still there, waiting for her Light to recharge. The Fallen acted more cheerful, paying less attention to her now. It must be apparent that the Servitor was killing her slowly.

"Hadrian," she whispered, "is ... is there any way you could tell the Vanguard where I am?"

But her escape plan had been foolproof. No tracks. A mute ghost who couldn't transmit or receive data. She had gotten away, and now a Servitor sat over her like a giant leech, draining her Light over and over.

_No more Light,_ she thought to herself. _Don't build up. Just stay human so there's nothing for it to-_

Another sweeping, draining scan. Nell felt like she was drowning again, sinking into cold, enveloping darkness.

A voice was down there, a voice that shook with fury. "I'm going to stop this, Nell. They can't do this to you. This is - this is - Oh, I can't bear it!"

Now the voice was shouting. Nell opened her blurry eyes.

The Servitor had finally directed its attention elsewhere. The Fallen stood in silence, staring, their hands at their sides.

In front of the Servitor floated a tiny, rusted ghost, his eye burning the same purple color as the Servitor's. He shouted at it in the Fallen language.

The Servitor croaked a reply. Hadrian shouted back, using similar phrases. Hearing such sounds pouring out of a ghost was wrong, somehow.

Nell watched this, too stunned from being drained to comprehend it. Her only thought was, "No wonder Hadrian doesn't talk. He can't speak English."

The Servitor rumbled and croaked, and Hadrian fell silent, listening. Nell had time to study his purple eye. Just like a tiny Servitor. Had he always been one, and that was why he couldn't work with Vanguard tech? Was he some kind of spy posing as a ghost? It wasn't like Nell knew any better. The other Guardians had thought he was a ghost, too. No wonder he refused to let anyone touch him. Close examination might reveal his secret.

Feeling more and more betrayed with every passing second, Nell watched as Hadrian and the Servitor flew across the camp together. The Fallen stepped aside reverently, watching. No one paid any attention to the weakened Guardian tied to the tree.

At the far end of the camp was a pile of bundles and supplies. The Servitor and Hadrian paused to study them. No - one of the bundles was an alien. A big alien, lying flat and wrapped in a blanket. Its head turned as the robots studied it. So it was alive, but sick or wounded.

The Servitor scanned the alien. Blue motes of stolen Light swirled out of its eye, into the alien's body. The alien groaned, raising one hand to its head. The other aliens muttered to each other.

The Servitor had stolen Nell's Light in order to heal one of its people.

She watched this with savage mixed feelings. On one hand, being captured and repeatedly drained was sapping the life out of her. On the other, she could see the aliens' point of view. They needed Light to heal a sick comrade, and the only way to get it was to siphon it off a Guardian.

The trouble was, they didn't need her now, and they certainly wouldn't let her go.

The big alien sat up, pushed away the blanket, and climbed to its feet. It had a thick mane of fur around its neck, and its armor was different from the other Fallen. A captain of some kind. It spoke to the aliens, and the aliens replied in chorus.

Hadrian reappeared in front of Nell in a swirl of Light. His eye, blue once more, had shrank to a frightened dot. He played a healing beam over her, pouring Light back into her. Nell's muscles regained their strength. The warm feeling returned to her blood.

"Traitor," she whispered to him.

He shook his head.

"You're a Servitor," she whispered. "You work for the Fallen. You're not a ghost."

He shook his head emphatically. _No, no_.

The Fallen captain spoke to the Servitor, bowing to it. Then he stalked across the camp toward Nell, picking up two curved knives as he came.

"They're going to kill me," she hissed. "Thanks a lot, traitor." She struggled against the ropes with all her newfound strength. They gave just enough for her to work one wrist free. She summoned her fiery gun and pressed it against the rope. It sizzled and began to burn.

The alien captain halted, standing over the ghost and Guardian, fingering the edges of the knives. Hadrian flew to its eye level and spoke urgently in its language. The captain growled a response, gesturing at Nell with a knife. Hadrian replied, sounding more desperate, glancing toward the distant Servitor.

One of the captain's hands shot out and grabbed the ghost. Nell's heart froze. Hadrian never let himself be touched, yet this Fallen had managed to do it. Why didn't he just disappear from between the alien's fingers? Then Nell saw the way the alien gripped the ghost and realized the alien knew exactly how to keep a ghost from phasing.

The captain raised a knife and began using it on the ghost, cutting and stabbing, working deftly. Metal shavings drifted to the ground. Hadrian screamed.

So did Nell. The ropes snapped. She whipped her golden gun up and shot the alien in the torso.

It was a testament to how tough the captain was - he survived the burning projectile punching through his body. But he staggered backward, dropping the ghost on the ground.

Nell snatched up Hadrian and leaped for the treetops.

The camp erupted into roars and hisses behind her. Arc bolts filled the air, some striking Nell and burning through her clothes. But worst of all was the huge missile of energy the Servitor sent after her. It tore the top half off a nearby tree, engulfing it in flames.

Nell ran for her life, pursued by Fallen, carrying the ghost she'd never been allowed to touch. She didn't even have a chance to see if he was dead.

The Fallen chased her almost all the way back to the City - one long, punishing race through the treetops and along the ground. Pain ate into her legs and back from being shot, but Nell grimly pressed on.

When she reached the guarded zone outside the City, the aliens gave up, cursing her from a distance. Nell slowed to a walk, gasping, limping, looking over her shoulder repeatedly. But they were retreating, fading back into the trees.

Finally, she looked down at the silent ghost in her hands.

His blue eye was still on, tracking her movements. But two of his shell segments had been pared away like the skin from an apple, exposing his core - a black core, like a Servitor. Punched into the core's thin metal was the symbol of a Fallen house. Light slowly trickled through the cuts, semi-liquid, vanishing as it fell into the air.

"They hurt you," Nell whispered. "My stupid little traitor." Rage and grief filled her in an explosive mixture. She stumbled to the nearest gate in the city wall, tears burning her eyes, and shouted the password at the guards. They cracked the gate for her. She whisked inside and hurried to the Tower lift as fast as she could limp.


	6. Verdict

The Tower guards stopped Nell, suspicious at the sight of an uninitiated Hunter with various wounds and carrying a ghost. One guard produced his ghost, which healed Nell, as the other guard called his superior.

It was a relief to stand and move without pain. Nell breathed a little easier, but she clutched Hadrian to her chest, hiding him so the guards couldn't see.

The other guard walked up, smirking. "There's a warrant for your arrest, issued this morning. Tried deserting the Vanguard, eh?"

Nell's heart plunged into her stomach. For a second she nearly burst into tears - prison, chains, no Light, no ghost. But she got a grip on herself, stood a little straighter, and lifted her chin to the guards. She'd chosen to take her ghost and run. Now she had to face the consequences, and she'd face them without blubbering.

"Take me in, then," she said.

To her surprise, the guard produced no handcuffs or restraints. He simply escorted her up the lift and through the tower to the office of the Vanguard Commander, Zavala. Nell thought wildly about resisting - but the guard was a Titan. He could summon a molten hammer of Light and beat her down in a second. Not to mention the rifle he carried.

Zavala was an imposing Awoken in heavy armor. He was studying a screen displaying maps of Mars when she entered the office. He looked up, saw her, and scowled.

"Stand by," he told the guard. "I doubt this will take long."

Nell trembled inside and clutched Hadrian a little tighter.

Zavala faced Nell, a full foot taller than she was. "Guardian Nell. Hunter trainee. This morning I received a report that not only had you failed to appear for training, but you've been neglecting your ghost."

"Yes sir," Nell said.

Zavala's scowl deepened. "Yes, you were absent? Or yes, you neglected your ghost?"

"Permission to explain, sir?" Nell said.

"Granted."

She drew a deep breath. "My ghost is mute, sir. He can't speak to me or communicate with Vanguard machines. He also won't let me touch him."

Zavala looked at her hands, clenched tightly around her ghost. "I see."

"That was before," Nell said. "My trainer was going to write me up for neglect. I told Hadrian - my ghost - and he still wouldn't let me touch him. So I ... we ran away early this morning. I only got a few miles into the mountains before I ran into a band of Fallen."

Zavala's gaze sharpened. "Where?"

"I could show you on a map," Nell said. "They had a Servitor, and I couldn't fight it. It drained my Light."

"A Servitor drained your Light?" Zavala said. "Impossible. They don't work like that."

"It did it three times, sir," Nell said. "I thought I would die each time. They tied me up in their camp and let me recover, then they'd drain me again. Then my ghost got tired of it and started arguing with the Servitor. His eye turned purple. Then the Servitor used my Light to heal a Fallen captain."

Zavala swayed a step closer, threatening. "It is unbecoming for a Guardian to lie."

Nell stood her ground, defiant, although part of her wanted to cower and beg for mercy. "It's the truth, sir. They were going to kill me, but my ghost intervened. And they ..." She slowly opened her hands, holding out her bleeding, injured ghost. "They did this to him."

Zavala stared at her ghost for a long moment, taking in the peeled shell and the Fallen mark on the core. Then he summoned his own ghost and let him scan Hadrian.

"Traveler's Light," the ghost swore. "Zavala, this ghost is equipped with eighty percent Servitor parts. It's barely a ghost at all."

Zavala abruptly turned his back and stood gazing at his screens with their maps and reports. Nell waited, cradling Hadrian, gazing into his eye. He wore his sad expression again. Zavala's ghost disappeared.

Zavala finally faced her again. "Consider yourself suspended, Guardian. You will be confined to your room as we attempt to repair your ghost. If it dies, we will try you as a human. If it lives and corroborates your story ... we shall see."

Nell nodded. A sudden lump in her throat made speech impossible.

The guard escorted her to the ghost repair station and explained the situation. Nell handed Hadrian over reluctantly, his eye fixed desperately on hers the whole time.

The ghost technician was baffled. "Servitor parts? How does that even happen? I don't know if I can repair this, Guardian."

Those words rang in her ears as the guard took her to her room and planted himself outside her door.

Inside, Nell began to pace. Around and around her room, restless, frustrated, and afraid. "Hadrian," she whispered, "please don't die. Please."

The walls in her mind were worse than the walls around her. Hadrian was a Servitor. That was one wall. Arrested for deserting. That was another wall. Zavala had called her a liar. Yet another wall. Hadrian would probably die. The final wall.

Hours passed. Nell paced until she was exhausted, threw herself on her bed, slept, and got up again. A guard brought her a dinner plate, to her relief. She hadn't eaten since a very small lunch while perched in a tree.

Late that night, when Nell was tossing in her bunk, unable to sleep, a voice whispered in her head, "Guardian?"

She sat up, snapping on the light. "Hadrian?"

"You can hear me?" His voice sounded shocked - and very weary.

"Yes! Where are you?" There was no sign of him in her room.

"I'm still in ghost repair." His voice was so familiar, the one she had heard in her sleep. "They replaced the hardware that had me locked into Fallen frequencies. But the rest has to stay, I'm afraid."

"But you'll live?" Nell exclaimed.

"I think so." Hadrian's voice had a quaver in it that went straight to her heart. "I won't let them court-martial you, Nell. None of this is your fault."

"So ..." She hesitated. "Are you a ghost? Or a Servitor?"

"A ghost," Hadrian said wearily. "With Servitor parts. I'll explain at the trial tomorrow. The point is, I've let you down badly. I should have been educating you from the second you awakened, but I couldn't. I wanted to apologize. While we have a little time to talk."

"You don't have to apologize," Nell murmured. "I understand. But why didn't you let me touch you?"

Hadrian was silent a long moment. "Because ... I've been grabbed and damaged by Fallen before. Like that."

Nell pressed a hand to her mouth.

"But you saved me," he added. "You're gentle. I think I could trust you. I've never had a Guardian before. I didn't know what it would be like."

"Poor Hadrian," Nell whispered.

"It's all right," he whispered back. "You mean everything to me." He paused, then added, "They're coming back with more parts. I can't talk now."

He fell silent in her head. Nell curled up on her bed and slowly fell asleep with a vast pain in her heart.

* * *

The trial took place in a big room full of folding chairs facing a podium where Zavala would be presiding. Nell sat in a raised chair beside the podium, looking out over the faces of her jury. It was all Hunters. Their ghosts formed a line, floating in the front row to scan and analyze. Every one of them wore a different shell, all colors and shapes. All were sleek and polished.

The ghost technician entered through a side door, his hand cupped under a hovering Hadrian. For the trial, he'd been left in his damaged, rusted shell, so everyone could see his condition. As Hadrian went to hover over Zavala's podium, the jury muttered darkly to each other. The ghosts did, too, many of their eyes flashing red.

"I'm doomed," Nell thought.

"Eyes up, Guardian," Hadrian replied in her head. "They wouldn't believe me, otherwise."

"This court is in session," Zavala boomed. The room fell silent.

Zavala gestured to Nell and told the jury her crimes - neglect of her ghost and deserting.

To her chagrin, the guardian who stood up to cross examine her was her trainer. He recounted her scores, underscoring how poorly she performed when her ghost was involved. Then he barked out questions about why she had run away.

Nell told her story, of trying to protect her ghost. The hunter jury listened impassively, but their ghosts softened a little. Some even made smile emotes.

But when she reached the part about the Servitor draining her Light, and of her ghost being able to communicate with Fallen, the room became very still. The ghosts stared at her, and at Hadrian.

"Ghost of the accused," Zavala said, "fly over this projector." He flicked on a light that appeared in a huge square of white on the wall behind him. Hadrian did so, turning until the Fallen mark appeared on the wall. It had recently been soldered shut, but the wound was fresh.

The room filled with whispers as the hunters and their ghosts exclaimed to each other.

Zavala called for silence. "Now," he said to Hadrian, "explain to this court how you happen to be part Servitor."

The injured ghost flew into the middle of the room and nodded politely to the jury. "Hello, Guardians. Hello, ghosts. The first part of my story will be hard for anyone but ghosts to understand, but I'll do my best."

Everyone sat up a little straighter, especially Nell.

"Ghosts," Hadrian said, "do you remember how lonely you were before you found your Guardian? I was that lonely. Sometimes I would happen across a Guardian and follow them for weeks, hoping their journeys might lead me to my own Guardian. I wandered the world, but in the end, I became certain that my Guardian's spark was in what you call the European Dead Zone. But it's a very large, rugged territory, and the weather can be harsh. One vicious winter, I froze straight through. I must have toppled into the snow, because I awoke months later in the hands of an alien you call the Fallen. Being a scavenger, the alien had plucked me from the snow with the intent of disassembling me. But when I awoke, it changed its mind.

"As you know, the Fallen once possessed the Traveler. They retain memories, however faint, of being powered by the Light. Of all enemies we face, they are perhaps the most to be pitied. The Fallen tried for many days to convince me to make it a Guardian. It was the saddest thing I had ever witnessed. It begged piteously. I learned enough of its language to explain that I couldn't. I was built only to accept the races the Traveler designed me for. The alien took this hard.

"In the end, it took me to one of their vast stores of machine parts where their engineers were building a Servitor. This process is very delicate and takes months. The alien took tools and parts and disassembled me. I lay on their work table for weeks as they studied me, arguing about what each component did, diagramming each one. They could have destroyed my core spark at any moment, but that wasn't their intent. They wanted a ghost that would accept a Fallen as a Guardian, and they supposed that rebuilding me as a Servitor, while retaining the ghost spark, would do the job.

"The Servitor parts changed me. I could communicate with any Fallen I wanted. I could see their sparks, dim, pathetic things they are. I could speak to their machines and Servitors. None of the aliens present had the ... how would you describe it, ghosts? The harmonic resonance? The compatibility? These terms are too weak to describe how your Guardian's spark feels. But now I began to wonder if my Guardian might not be a Fallen, after all.

"I traveled with the Fallen for years after that. They passed me from band to band, explaining about my modifications and the possibility that I might one day choose one of them. I was treated with reverence. And yet."

Hadrian gazed around the room, finally stopping at Nell. "The Fallen are what they are. Invariably, each new group of Fallen would be overcome with the curiosity to see how I worked. I was ripped apart and reassembled over and over. The inside of my shell and the outside of my core carry the marks of many disparate bands and houses of the Fallen. I learned to avoid being touched or caught, but the Fallen are very quick. I couldn't always avoid them.

"By the time I neared my Guardian's spark, I had been reduced to two personality traits: fear, and dogged determination to find my Guardian. Light, I've been so afraid for so long. If you only knew the helplessness of being seized and pulled to pieces whenever your companions grow bored ... I can't explain it."

The jury hung on Hadrian's every word. The ghosts, in particular, shifted in midair, sharing his horror and agony. Nell sat with one hand pressed to her mouth to keep from sobbing aloud.

"Then," Hadrian continued, "one night, my Fallen band camped near the sea. And I felt my Guardian's spark. It called to me, sang to me, with a beauty I had never experienced before. When the Fallen were distracted with food, I phased and sneaked away from them. I found my Guardian on the shore a few miles away. A human female. I resurrected her, bonding my spark to hers, and to my horror found that I couldn't communicate with her. The Servitor parts had completely attuned me to Fallen. I could neither make the proper sounds for human speech, nor could I speak mind to mind. My poor Guardian built her own story about why she was out in such a lonely place with a silent robot. I could only communicate in yes and no gestures, and that's a poor excuse for the depth I longed for.

"But my courageous Guardian not only immediately learned to use her Light to summon a golden gun, she gleaned enough from my gestures to understand roughly what a Guardian is. I led her toward the camp of the nearest Guardian who could help her. Thank the Traveler he was on patrol in our area.

"We arrived at the Tower at last ... and I could not communicate with my sibling ghosts. This plunged poor Nell into hardship after hardship. She struggled through her training, taking extra punishment whenever I failed her. Despite having the mind and Light of a ghost, my operational hardware was that of a Servitor.

"And I was still so terrified of being touched. I lived with the constant nightmare of being seized and torn apart. I could not even countenance the idea of a new shell, because that would involve disassembly. I loved my Guardian, but I could not bring myself to let her touch me. This set about a chain of events already mentioned. She was going to be badly punished for neglecting me. But she tried to care for me. I was the one at fault.

"Due to her love for me, she took me and ran away. Please, don't punish her for that. I drove her to it with my foolish inability to trust my own Guardian." He paused and gave Zavala an imploring look.

Zavala only gestured for him to continue.

Hadrian faced the jury again. "We blundered into a camp of Fallen I could not properly warn my Guardian about. They had with them a Master Servitor. That type can, indeed, manipulate Light. It cannot generate it, but it can move it from place to place and put it to rudimentary uses. The captain of their band had taken ill after a desperate fight with Cabal. They suspected poison, but could do nothing. They had tried and failed to capture Guardians until Nell happened across them. They stripped her of her Light and used it to heal their captain. I learned this when I interceded for my Guardian. The Servitor knew of me and asked for my guidance in using the Light in healing.

"I was part Servitor, and I know the ways of Fallen. I helped them on the condition that they would free my Guardian. But upon being healed, the captain rose from his bed, laughing that he would free the Guardian, all right. He would free her from all life. I begged him not to. He scoffed, seized me, cut open my shell, and carved his own mark upon my core. He claimed that I belonged to him. You see the damage he inflicted.

"At that point, my Guardian broke free, wounded the captain, rescued me, and ran. My Guardian touched me for the first time, and she was exceedingly gentle, even while fleeing enemies. I ... my fears of her were groundless. I'll spend the rest of our lives making it up to her."

He paused, and a tremor passed through him. "Then we returned to the Tower. Nobody believed my Guardian's story. And I was ... I was torn apart again." His voice wavered.

The jury shifted and muttered. The ghosts in particular were extremely moved. All of them emoted sadness, and some looked around for their Guardians, reassuring themselves that they were unharmed.

Hadrian turned to Zavala. "That's all, sir, he said, sounding tearful. "Might I go to my Guardian now?"

"Go," Zavala said.

Hadrian flew to Nell, who caught him in a hug, tears running silently down her face.

Zavala called the ghost technician forward to explain about the Servitor parts in the ghost's core. Nell held Hadrian in her lap, stroking the unbroken parts of his shell, as they waited for a verdict.

After the technician finished his presentation, the jury took a break. They filed out of the room, their ghosts seeking out their Guardians. Many received hugs or caresses at once. Zavala left, too, summoning his own ghost.

"I think you convinced them," Nell said, smiling and wiping her face.

"I hope so," Hadrian murmured. "If they still insist on punishing you, I might lose my temper and shoot Servitor bolts."

"Can you?"

"I don't know. I feel like I could, maybe."

Nell lifted Hadrian and peered into his eye. "I'll get you a new shell as quick as I can."

"The ghost tech has one ready for me," Hadrian replied. "He takes pride in his ghost care, and he hated leaving me like this. I won't let you down any more, Nell. I can interface with human tech and other ghosts now."

"And Fallen?"

"I don't know," Hadrian replied, looking down. "I honestly never want to see Fallen again, let alone speak their language."

* * *

They waited as the jury filed back in, their ghosts flying back into position in the front row.

Zavala returned, too. "Has the jury reached a verdict?"

The jury foreman stood up. "We have, Commander. Guardian Nell did break rules, but she did it to save her ghost. Our verdict is guilty. However, we recommend that her punishment be intensive training in ghost interaction during combat scenarios."

Zavala turned to the ghosts. "And yours?"

A ghost in a green and red shell flew forward. "We agree with our Guardians, Commander. They need time together, and close training will provide that."

"Verdict: guilty," Zavala said. "Your sentence is extra training with your ghost. This court is adjourned."

Heart beating hard, Nell waded into the jury seats to find her trainer. He wore a satisfied smirk as he arranged her extra courses - evenings and weekends, on top of her regular training.

Then Nell took Hadrian back to ghost repair and hovered nearby while the technician replaced Hadrian's shell. Despite the ghost's brave words, his terror beat in her own heart as the technician began to unscrew the old shell.

"It's okay," Nell whispered, peering into Hadrian's eye. "I'm here. Nobody will hurt you any more."

"Yes, Guardian," he whispered in her mind. "Keep talking to me."

Nell whispered encouragement throughout the minor operation. Hadrian hung on her every word. As soon as his new shell was in place, he zoomed to her and burrowed between her hair and neck.

"Take care of him," the technician told her. "I mean it. He's completely unique."

"I know that, sir," Nell said, rubbing her cheek against the little robot. "I've always known that."

As she walked back to her room, she whispered to the hiding ghost, "Are you all right?"

"I will be," he whispered in her ear. "You have to promise never to take me apart without asking."

"Hadrian," Nell whispered, "I promise to never take you apart, period. Changing shells doesn't count."

She entered her tiny dorm room and sat down, where she gave in to a case of post-trial shakes. All she could do was hold her ghost as her body trembled.

"Were you very frightened?" Hadrian asked, gazing at her in bewilderment.

Nell nodded. "I expected prison. I thought they'd take you away forever." She released him to float in the air, and curled into a ball, wrapping her arms around herself. "I never really ... really let myself think about that Servitor stealing my Light. And how bad arc bolts hurt. And that scream you made. It's all hitting me at once."

Hadrian swept her with a healing beam. "My sweet Guardian, I should have tended to you."

"You were injured," Nell said through her teeth. "And they took you away and hurt you, and I'm so sorry." To her chagrin, she began to cry again.

A soft touch on her cheek. She looked up to see Hadrian floating an inch away, his shell tilted to brush against her face. "Don't cry, Nell. It's ... it's all right."

"No, it's not." She held out one hand, and he landed on her palm. "All those horrible things you went through. You couldn't even talk anymore. And I yelled at you. I feel so rotten."

"I forgive you, Nell," he said, gazing at her. "Really, I do. Having a Guardian has been the most wonderful, fulfilling experience of my life. When you would stand up for me ... every time I let you down ... your spark burned with so much love that it healed me a little. Like right now. Nell, I can't even express how beautiful your Light is right now."

Nell sniffed and wiped her face on her sleeve. "I should have been there when they took out the Servitor bits. You needed me. I didn't understand."

"It wasn't so bad," Hadrian said. "Guardians are much kinder than Fallen. Being able to speak to you afterward made up for it."

She ran her fingers over his shell. "Poor little ghost." The trembling was beginning to subside. Nell uncurled and stretched out on her bunk, limp as a worn-out ammo belt. As she began to calm, exhaustion began to creep in.

Hadrian hovered over her and opened his shell, expanding into a sphere of Light. He poured fresh healing into her, easing the stress levels and the beginnings of a bad headache. The various Fallen engravings on his black core were clearly visible.

As he closed his shell and landed beside her on the pillow, Nell said, "You'll have those Fallen marks forever, won't you?"

Hadrian wore his sad expression for a moment. Then he met her eyes. "The Fallen engraved their symbols on my core. But you ... you're engraved on my heart."

Nell curled a hand around him, biting her lips to hold back more tears.

Hadrian cuddled up to her, and realized that he had no problems with his Guardian touching him.

None whatsoever.


End file.
